willfullyobscure:WhiskeyBoy: Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

counter-troll:

Monsanto bankrupting farmers for planting seeds they grew themselves

I believe that makes us love-love. Your serve.

Which is a problem with patent law, not science. And as much as I hate Monsanto, you sign a contract not to save seed and re-use it, then I'm not going to cry when lawyers plant a lawsuit up your ass if you break it. Nobody made you buy the seed. You bought it because it increases yield by allowing you to spray your field indiscriminately. Take away their right to exercise rights over that, but don't put GMO in a box over that.

2-hydroxypropane-1,2,3-tricarboxylic acid is a lot of syllables, its other "E330" name seem horrible to some, yet it's just citric acid. Everything has systematic/standardized names, that doesn't make it inherently good or bad. The "natural" denomination is naive at best, actively misleading at worst.

Read my post again, paying particular attention to (i.e. compounds found only in laboratories). Citric acid is a poor example as it is obviously found in nature.

Then consider the wide variety of compounds that are made in laboratories to be used as preservatives, texture enhancers, and other similar additives.

There are almost no compounds found only in laboratories (exceptions are the elements created through radioactive bombarding). Many compounds also found in nature can be synthisized in a factory as well (essentially made from the building blocks of carbon chains as the plants or animals did originally but in a different method). Those preservatives, texture enhancers etc were almost all originally isolated from something more complex (usually through a complex process). Today rather than buying a ton of eggs for a thickener, more thickener can simply be made. It's not "natural" but the chemical is the same.

I know people that believe the same exact chemical will have different effects depending on whether it's "natural" or made in a lab.

Hell, my brother believes that "pesticides" and other "unnatural chemicals" will stay in your body forever (as in, a biological half-life doesn't exist), and even if you take just minute amounts, say on the order of micrograms or nanograms, then it will eventually add up until it kills you 40 years down the line. To be fair, my brother barely has a high school education (he dropped out, then took his GED test years later), so I can forgive him a bit on the subject. He's not the brightest bulb in the box. His wife, however, has a masters degree in botany - she I cannot forgiv ...

So. Question. If these chemicals have no half life, what is poop? And wouldn't we all be thousand pound (or larger) behemoths by the time we die?

WhiskeyBoy:manimal2878: WhiskeyBoy: Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

We already have more than enough food for everyone in the world, the problem isn't food production it's distribution. There is no profit in feeding people on the other side of the globe.

Distribution is expensive. You need to be able to grow strains of healthy foods where they are needed, not fly bags full when they are needed. GM foods developed to grow and contain vital nutrients in those regions is key. It is still (sadly) a profits game. Companies that own patents to GM foods preventing their global free distribution to help diminish world hunger over profit margins are just as bad as people who wouldn't have them distributed due to their "frankenfoodiness" or whatever.

True, good points. Some places are just not good places to try and grow things, if GM food can help with that that would be great.

Kinek:willfullyobscure: WhiskeyBoy: Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

counter-troll:

Monsanto bankrupting farmers for planting seeds they grew themselves

I believe that makes us love-love. Your serve.

Which is a problem with patent law, not science. And as much as I hate Monsanto, you sign a contract not to save seed and re-use it, then I'm not going to cry when lawyers plant a lawsuit up your ass if you break it. Nobody made you buy the seed. You bought it because it increases yield by allowing you to spray your field indiscriminately. Take away their right to exercise rights over that, but don't put GMO in a box over that.

Except it doesn't and it didn't. The GMO soybeans were substantially outperformed by conventional crops.

And the farmer used MORE herbicide, not less, and it ended up costing him money. So GMO soybeans sucked for him and then Monsanto collected secret evidence to sue him with when he didn't do anything wrong. His fields got contaminated with the GMO crops.

And now, we can't get any seed that is guaranteed to be GMO free even when not buying from Monsanto. I'd say there's a few issues here that go beyond predatory business practices.

willfullyobscure:Kinek: willfullyobscure: WhiskeyBoy: Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

counter-troll:

Monsanto bankrupting farmers for planting seeds they grew themselves

I believe that makes us love-love. Your serve.

Which is a problem with patent law, not science. And as much as I hate Monsanto, you sign a contract not to save seed and re-use it, then I'm not going to cry when lawyers plant a lawsuit up your ass if you break it. Nobody made you buy the seed. You bought it because it increases yield by allowing you to spray your field indiscriminately. Take away their right to exercise rights over that, but don't put GMO in a box over that.

Except it doesn't and it didn't. The GMO soybeans were substantially outperformed by conventional crops.

And the farmer used MORE herbicide, not less, and it ended up costing him money. So GMO soybeans sucked for him and then Monsanto collected secret evidence to sue him with when he didn't do anything wrong. His fields got contaminated with the GMO crops.

And now, we can't get any seed that is guaranteed to be GMO free even when not buying from Monsanto. I'd say there's a few issues here that go beyond predatory business practices.

Gonna need a big old citation on that.

And the use of MORE herbicide is a decision that's left up to the farmer. You can spray a few times, or lots. That's up to the farmer.

And despite the convenient narrative, the story of 'accidental' GMO contamination is a load of bull hockey. One of the cases had a farmer going into a seed dumping silo, growing out the seeds testing for herbicide resistance, and then selecting those as the ones he was going to use for an extra growing season because he didn't want to pay the licensing fees. He got caught. The case is going up before the Supreme Court I think. Other cases have GM seeds magically drifting past acres of land managing to land on fertile soil. Farmers aren't dumb. And they're under pressure to produce and have extremely low profit margins. I don't blame them for trying to scrimp and save where they can.. If there was a way to screw the Man, I'd take it too. But they're not innocent here. The question is at its basis, are units of reproduction themselves patentable? As it stands at the moment, the answer is yes. I hope it changes. It'll stop the scientific waters being muddied by politics.

And the world could've fixed the whole issue with GM 'Pollution' by allowing the terminator seeds. But it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't. Sterile seeds and people poured out of the woodwork saying that the corporations were trying to control the food supply. Fertile seeds and people piss and moan about contamination.

Englebert Slaptyback:Read my post again, paying particular attention to (i.e. compounds found only in laboratories). Citric acid is a poor example as it is obviously found in nature.

Then consider the wide variety of compounds that are made in laboratories to be used as preservatives, texture enhancers, and other similar additives.

I like when people not in the food industry talk like they're actually in the food industry. You can pick them out pretty easily when they say 'compounds that are made in laboratories', specifically when they say it like its a bad thing.

portnoyd:Englebert Slaptyback: Read my post again, paying particular attention to (i.e. compounds found only in laboratories). Citric acid is a poor example as it is obviously found in nature.

Then consider the wide variety of compounds that are made in laboratories to be used as preservatives, texture enhancers, and other similar additives.

I like when people not in the food industry talk like they're actually in the food industry. You can pick them out pretty easily when they say 'compounds that are made in laboratories', specifically when they say it like its a bad thing.

It's really a poor blanket statement.

But it is a good litmus test to determine if the person actually knows what they are talking about.

WhiskeyBoy:Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

TFA: A survey released last week, of 4,000 people in eight European countries, found that lots of people would rather eat more "natural" foods-74 percent called these products healthier, and 72 percent said they'd pay a premium to get them. But respondents didn't have a consistent sense of what the label means.

Well, that's not the least bit surprising.

willfullyobscure:"Food scientists at the FDA are notequipped to handle such matters of natural philosophy."

fark you, asshole. they're exactly equipped to answer this question and they're the ones you should be asking.

Why? It's pointless.If the FDA rules that Goldfish are natural because they don't contain preservatives and are made with the same ingredients (flour, oil, cheese, salt, yeast, spices) and the same process (baking) that you can use at home, do you then think that everyone is going to suddenly say, "Oh, well, I guess Goldfish are a perfectly natural food"? Nobody would give a goddamn what they said about it. The word "natural" is a heavily politicized word whose meaning is constantly disagreed upon. WTF good does it do for a government agency to try and settle a quibbling debate over the definition of a now-meaningless word by impotent fiat? NONE.

WhiskeyBoy:Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

Kinek:willfullyobscure: Kinek: willfullyobscure: WhiskeyBoy: Genetically modified foods are a good thing. A VERY VERY good thing. If you think otherwise, and campaign to force the world to adhere to your belief, you're helping to contribute to the global starvation problem. Yeah I said it.

Also if you use the term "frankenfood" I will not take your argument seriously.

counter-troll:

Monsanto bankrupting farmers for planting seeds they grew themselves

I believe that makes us love-love. Your serve.

Which is a problem with patent law, not science. And as much as I hate Monsanto, you sign a contract not to save seed and re-use it, then I'm not going to cry when lawyers plant a lawsuit up your ass if you break it. Nobody made you buy the seed. You bought it because it increases yield by allowing you to spray your field indiscriminately. Take away their right to exercise rights over that, but don't put GMO in a box over that.

Except it doesn't and it didn't. The GMO soybeans were substantially outperformed by conventional crops.

And the farmer used MORE herbicide, not less, and it ended up costing him money. So GMO soybeans sucked for him and then Monsanto collected secret evidence to sue him with when he didn't do anything wrong. His fields got contaminated with the GMO crops.

And now, we can't get any seed that is guaranteed to be GMO free even when not buying from Monsanto. I'd say there's a few issues here that go beyond predatory business practices.

Gonna need a big old citation on that.

And the use of MORE herbicide is a decision that's left up to the farmer. You can spray a few times, or lots. That's up to the farmer.

And despite the convenient narrative, the story of 'accidental' GMO contamination is a load of bull hockey. ..

What article? The Slate one? I'm not seeing anything relating to yield. Point it out so I can refute it.

To further clarify, you -MAY- be right. I'll have to see what you dig up. I know that there was an extremely controversial report that came out recently. Can't find or remember it. The issue is, even if you're right, your conclusions may be wrong. The way GMOs are treated at the moment are apalling. Basically the only two modifications we have are Bt insertion and Glysophate resistances. That's pretty much it. Glysophate resistance because it ties into Monsanto's business plan. Bt because it was a natural choice.

There's so much more that can be done with GM crops. Halide resistance (something that I worked on as an undergrad, essentially making it so that plants can deal with high salt concentrations and not taste terrible), copy paste resistance to diseases, on the fly modification, insertion of bacterial detoxification genes into weeds to assist bioreclamation of industrial waste sites. Hell, I heard someone mention the other day the idea of Perennial wheat. GM is one more tool in the box for breeding, and it's an excellent tool. But the current uses its being put to are less than impressive. This is partially due to business practices, but also due in part to the fact that there's no public sector for this research. The public decided to defund most crop research programs 20 years ago, and we're seeing the loss in innovation now. And GM is such a politically poisonous well at the moment that most grants won't even fund it. The public has decided that Monsanto and GMs are one and the same, and by doing so, have made it true by raising the bar of entry to the market so high that only Monsanto can step over it.

What article? The Slate one? I'm not seeing anything relating to yield. Point it out so I can refute it.

To further clarify, you -MAY- be right. I'll have to see what you dig up. I know that there was an extremely controversial report that came out recently. Can't find or remember it. The issue is, even if you're right, your conclusions may be wrong. The way GMOs are treated at the moment are apalling. Basically the only two modifications we have are Bt insertion and Glysophate resistances. That's pretty much it. Glysophate resistance because it ties into Monsanto's business plan. Bt because it was a natural choice.

I am clearly an ironic troll but in all seriousness my objection to GM crops isn't all technical; its in the application. in the US, these decisions aren't being made around improving of food supply. they're being made around driving revenues for Monsanto. Laudable efforts to improve historically poor yields, like the ones you mentioned, are ignored, on purpose, to push products into American agriculture which doesn't have any of those problems. And we don't yet know what happens when something goes wrong.